Vaissière on Huns and Xiongnu

[Andreas Johansson]

Etienne de la Vaissière's chapter from Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila is online at Academia.edu:

The Steppe World and the Rise of the Huns

It argues that the Attilanic and Iranian Huns were indeed the political, if not necessarily genetic, heirs of the Xiongnu.

[Duncan Head]

Useful, thanks. A lot of this he's touched on before, for instance in the "Is there a nationality of the Hephthalites" article.

[Dangun]

Interesting. But what did you think of the argument?

I was not compelled.
Lack of archaeology, the lack of linguistic evidence and the missing 200 years skimmed over.

I was confused by one point though...
"Barbarians at the Wall" explicitly said that the Huns who invaded Europe never claimed Mongolian Xiongnu heritage, but this article says the opposite. So I am confused.

[Duncan Head]

Interesting. But what did you think of the argument?

Moderately convincing. Someone, forget who, wrote on the subject a few years ago saying that the question is now longer was there a relationship betwen Xiongnu and Huns, but what was the nature of that relationship.

Lack of archaeology

"The archaeological evidence for the Huns of Europe is quite different, however, and permits us to draw important inferences about their origin in East Asia."

I was confused by one point though...
"Barbarians at the Wall" explicitly said that the Huns who invaded Europe never claimed Mongolian Xiongnu heritage, but this article says the opposite. So I am confused.

No, he doesn't quite say that they claimed Xiongnu heritage. He says that the name "Hun" was the same as the name "Xiongnu"; and that they legitimately could claim to be political  heirs of the Xiongnu - not that they actually did. I don't think we really know what the European Huns "claimed".

[Dangun]

No, he doesn't quite say that they claimed Xiongnu heritage. He says that the name "Hun" was the same as the name "Xiongnu"; and that they legitimately could claim to be political  heirs of the Xiongnu - not that they actually did. I don't think we really know what the European Huns "claimed".

OK, maybe I misunderstand, but he writes on page 188:
"Whether they were the direct descendants of the Xiongnu of antiquity, as they claimed, is another question that historians have barely touched upon. "

I believe the subject here is 'the Huns that came from inner Asia in the 4th century and entered Europe', although it's a little fuzzy. Isn't this a statement about what the Huns claimed about themselves. I hadn't realised there was a source for what the European Huns thought about their own origins?

[Andreas Johansson]

I think the idea is that by calling themselves "Huns" they claimed to be the heirs of the old Xiongnu, because the names are one. Similarly, anyone calling themselves "English" is in a sense claiming to be the heir of the Angles of the early Middle Ages.

[Duncan Head]

OK, maybe I misunderstand, but he writes on page 188:
"Whether they were the direct descendants of the Xiongnu of antiquity, as they claimed, is another question that historians have barely touched upon. "

I believe the subject here is 'the Huns that came from inner Asia in the 4th century and entered Europe', although it's a little fuzzy. Isn't this a statement about what the Huns claimed about themselves. I hadn't realised there was a source for what the European Huns thought about their own origins?

It is fuzzy: I read him as saying in this section that the 4th-century northern "Huns" - "these fourth-century Xiongnu/Huns north of the Altai" - claimed descent from the earlier imperial Xiongnu, not that the European Huns did so. I don't see him as making a specific statememt about what the EuroHuns themselves claimed. But you may well be correct, this bit's not as clear as it could be.

The problem then has shifted from the relationship of the Huns and the Xiongnu in the fourth century to the relationship of the fourth-century Xiongnu to the second-century Xiongnu. We possess a coherent set of independent textual and archaeological set of proofs for the fact that the Huns came from Inner Asia and bore the name transcribed by the Chinese as "Xiongnu." Whether they were the direct descendants of the Xiongnu of antiquity, as they claimed, is another question that historians have barely touched upon. What was the relationship between these fourth-century Xiongnu/Huns north of the Altai to the Xiongnu/Hun empire of antiquity? They called themselves Xiongnu/Huns, and that is how they were known by their neighbors in the Altai; it must be stressed that the extreme paucity of documentation does not allow us to go much beyond this.

[aligern]

Our written evidence for the peoples of Central Asia is nearly all from Classical or Chinese written sources. My read of La Vaissiere was that the Xiong Nu were very likely running a royal tribe structure, similar to the Scythians or Sarmatians, or the Turks. Subordinate tribes could be called either by an unique tribal name or by the name of the confederation. Thus the Huns might be the descendants of the original royal tribe, the descendants of a tribe that was. an element of the confederation or even another group that was simply arrogating to  itself an historic and prestigious name.
Innthe 4th/ 5th century we have several Hun groups . I don't  think the archaeology conclusively links the Hun groups, though the supposed Hunnic   cauldrons are found from Korea thfough to Central Europe , they might just be high status gift objects, or perhaps the stock in trade of travelling shamans. Similarly it is difficult to make much linkage based upon skull deformation. We would have the problem with any DNA analysis of the known concubinage of Hun rulers and the likelihood that preserved graves will only represent the upper classes. Even if research was done on lower class graves the question would be are they Huns  or just a group caught up with the Huns.  There is a similar problem with the Avars who appear to act as we would expect a nation to act, but are likely several groups fleeing from the Turks who choose a famous name.  On the steppe it would appear that you can choose your ethnicity by choosing a submission or confederation and a orestigious name.

[Dangun]

Thanks guys, I thought I was going a little mad.

On a separate, but related topic, I noticed today that about 600 pages of the 750 paged Xiongnu Archaeology is available for free on researchgate:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329543225_XIONGNU_ARCHAEOLOGY_-_Multidisciplinary_Perspectives_of_the_First_Steppe_Empire_in_Inner_Asia/link/5c0ecc7d92851c39ebe43670/download

This link should work, but I can send the PDF if need be.
Its not as dry as it sounds, page 35-120 have some big picture, narrative chapters.